» T4 
>y 1 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 



BY 
CHESTER JACOB TELLER 

Executive Director 
THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 



[Reprint from the American Jewish Year Booli 5679] 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 

1918 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOAED 

BY CHESTER JACOB TELLER 
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

Primarily the purpose of the Jewish Welfare Board is to 
help America win the war. Despite the basic American prin- 
ciple of a separate Church and State, or, to be more exact, 
because of it, the American Government in the first days of the 
war perceived the necessity of calling upon certain religious 
welfare agencies to co-operate with it. It sought this co- 
operation because it recognized the value of morale in warfare, 
and knew how close was the relationship between morale and 
modem community ways of life. With a breadth of view and 
a degree of foresight, perhaps never before equalled by a war 
administration of any other country, the United States Gov- 
ernment set itself to thinking out the war problems not only 
in terms of ships, guns, munitions, and supplies, but also in 
health, decency, personal improvement of the men, content- 
ment, esprit. In short, all those elements that go to make up 
the concept of morale in its broadest implications received the 
closest study and the most thorough-going application. 

A special Commission on Training Camp Activities was 
created, as a branch of the War Department, charged with the 
specific duties of making life in the new American camps and 
in the communities adjoining the camps as normal as con- 
ditions of actual war and the problems of an unprecedented 
national emergency would permit. This commission sought 
to utilize the potential social resources of the country, and it 
early brought to bear on the problem the whole strength of the 



2 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

Young Men's Christian Association, with its nation-wide 
organization, so thoroughly alive to the needs of young men, 
and so excellently adapted to the nation's new work. 

In the same spirit and for the same purposes the War 
Department through this special Training Camp Commis- 
sion — the Fosdick Commission, as it has come to be known — 
invited the large Catholic group in America to participate in 
the national welfare program, with the result that the Knights 
of Columbus was nominated by the Catholic Church and 
accepted by the American Government as the authoritative 
Catholic agency for war purposes. 

The selection of the third agency to represent what might 
be considered the third largest religious group in America, 
namely, the Jewish group, was fraught with difficulties. It is 
a commentary upon Jewish life in America, and particularly 
upon its work of national organization and management, that 
with 260 years of history behind it, and with literally thousands 
of organizations, no single agency could be selected as repre- 
sentative of the Jewry of America. True, one or two of them 
seemed to have some special claim to such recognition, but by 
reason of their limited constitution or platform, or for some 
other reason, they failed to secure the endorsement of the Jews 
as a whole. The result was a meeting of representatives of 
some ten or more national Jewish organizations, at which it 
was decided that each organization present should delegate 
certain powers to a new agency. This was the beginning of the 
organization which has since become known as the Jewish 
Welfare Board, and which has obtained the official recognition 
of the Government and, indeed, its mandate to contribute on 
behalf of the Jews of America to the national work of welfare 
among the nation's uniformed men. 






THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 3 

As the officially recognized agency of the War Department 
and of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, the 
Jewish Welfare Board has been called to undertake high tasks 
and responsibilities. It has been charged with the nomination 
and selection of the Jewish welfare workers in the camps and 
cantonments of this country and in the hospitals and rest 
camps abroad. In these increasingly critical times, no task 
could be more exacting. The initial selection of men, however, 
is but part of it. It is necessary that they be carefully 
apprised of their duties as quasi-public officials, that they 
know thoroughly their relation to the Goverjiment, to its mili- 
tary establishment, to the Commission on Training Camp 
Activities, and to the welfare agencies with which we have 
joined hands, namely, the Y. M. C. A. and the K. of C. They 
must know the meaning of democracy in the American camp. 
They should understand what Americanization denotes and 
what it does not. They must be inspired with the ideal of an 
army and navy, selected from all races and creeds, to fight for 
the liberties of all peoples and for the rights of all religions, 
under our flag and under the flags of the Allies. And our wel- 
fare workers must be trained to interpret these things to the sol- 
diers and sailors, to bring group closer to group and all men 
into clearer understanding of America's ideals and aims in this 
war. The Avelfare agencies are not invited to do separatist 
work ; they are asked to join hands in fostering and promoting 
a joint welfare program. 

As its contribution to this program, the Jewish Welfare 
Board has placed one hundred and ninety-eight workers in 
the American camps, and has sent, in addition, countless 
others — volunteers Avho, as occasional or regular visitors in the 
camps, have preached the message of religion, have assisted 



4 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

in other ways at religious services, visited the sick in the hos- 
pitals, the men in difficulty in the guard-houses, or enter- 
tained men in groups and cheered and comforted them indi- 
vidually. As its contribution to the physical resources of the 
camps, the Welfare Board is erecting thirty buildings, not to 
overlap, not to duplicate, but to supplement the facilities 
created by other agencies, where such facilities were needed, 
either for the housing of our workers and the administration of 
their work, or for the general welfare needs of Jews and non- 
Jews alike. At Camp Upton, near New York, the Jewish 
Welfare Building, recently completed, is used for services by 
soldiers of every faith. On the other hand, the Welfare Board 
makes use of a general church headquarters, erected by the 
General War-Time Commission on the Churches, to the up- 
keep of which it contributes a substantial amount of money. 

Again, we have assisted the American Library Association 
in its nation-wide campaign for books. We have encouraged 
the giving of comforts and gifts to the soldiers and sailors, 
regardless of creed, for to draw distinctions between creeds 
would be to violate the very ethics of the democracy we cherish. 
As official representatives of the Government, we are called to 
minister to all men. 

This by no means implies that religious work has no place 
in the American welfare program, or that the welfare agencies 
must reduce their efforts to that colorless, meaningless some- 
thing which frequently goes by the name of non-sectarianism. 
On the contrary, the Jewish Welfare Board would not truly 
represent the American Government, unless it also represented 
the organized Jewry which created it. Indeed, specialized 
ministrations of each group to its own men in the camps are 
implied in the very organization which the War Department 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 5 

created with the help of the Commission on Training Camp 
Activities and the welfare agencies. 

Thanks to this large view on the part of the Government, we 
have in the Welfare Board, for the first time in the history of 
America, an organization which not only has the ofiicial en- 
dorsement of the Government, but likewise that of organized 
American Jewry. The Board to-day counts among its societies 
no less than fourteeen prominent Jewish associations, among 
which are the Agudath ha-Eabbonim, Central Conference of 
American Eabbis, Council of Jewish Women, Council of 
Young Men's Hebrew and Kindred Associations, Independent 
Order Bnai Brith, Independent Order Brith Abraham, In- 
dependent Order Brith Sholom, Jewish Chautauqua Society, 
Jewish Publication Society of America, National Federation 
of Temple Sisterhoods, New York Board of Jewish Ministers, 
.Order Brith Abraham, Union of American Hebrew Congrega- 
tions, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and the 
United Synagogue of America. 

The relationship between the Board and its parent bodies is 
for the most part steady and constructive. The rabbinical 
bodies have co-operated in the arrangement of an abridged 
prayer book for the use of soldiers and sailors of our faith. 
The Jewish Publication Society of America acts as the pub- 
lishing agency of the board, which has thus far placed orders 
with it for the publication of no less than one hundred and 
eighty thousand copies of the Abridged Prayer Book and one 
hundred and sixty thousand copies of the Readings from the 
Holy Scripture, arranged with the help of the Society's editor. 

With the Agudath ha-Eabbonim (the Federation of Ortho- 
dox Eabbis) the Welfare Board has been active in an inquiry 
as to the demand for kosher food on the part of the Jewish 



6 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

men in the camps, governmental sanction having been secured 
for the sale of kosher non-perishable food products in the 
camps and cantonments wherever such supply is warranted by 
the demand therefor. 

A series of circuits for the conduct of lecture courses to sol- 
diers and sailors throughout the spring and summer months 
is being arranged under the joint auspices of the Welfare Board 
and the Jewish Chautauqua Society. 

To the town or community program of the Welfare Board 
substantial contributions have been made by the Independent 
Order Bnai Brith, which has organized some eight or nine 
community centers now operating as I. 0. B. B. branches of 
the Welfare Board. While these branches of themselves con- 
stitute a material donation to our total assets, the I. 0. B. B. 
and the Independent Order Brith Abraham, as well as other 
national Jewish fraternities, are rendering large services of 
another kind through the campaigns for funds which they have 
furthered throughout their lodges and the moral backing and 
encouragement which they have from the beginning lent in 
unstinted measure. 

The Council of Young Men's Hebrew and Kindred Associa- 
tions has acted as our special advisory body wherever we have 
.needed the viewpoint of the specialist in the inauguration of 
soldier activities in conjunction with Y. M. C. A. work. 

The American Jewish Eelief Committee, though in no way 
a constituent or affiliated organization, has rendered our work 
an immeasurable service by relieving us almost entirely from 
the labor and responsibility of fund-raising. Of the million 
or more dollars that have been contributed to welfare work to 
date, a very large part was secured in the special campaign of 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 7 

the American Jewish Relief Committee in New York City in 
December last, which brought together a fund of about five mil- 
lion dollars for the war sufferers and the Welfare Board con- 
jointly, and a large part of the balance of our total income to 
date has likewise been secured under the friendly auspices of 
this committee. 

To the American Jewish Committee, under the leadership 
of Mr. Louis Marshall, we look for the adjudication of cases 
involving religious or other rights of Jewish men, and, in turn, 
we are helping the Bureau of Jewish Statistics and Eeseareh 
of the American Jewish Committee in its special work of 
securing a list of the names of all Jews participating in the 
present war in the American military and naval forces, by 
sending to that Bureau all the statistical data which it becomes 
possible for our agents to secure. 

We are also extending assistance and hospitality to the Jew- 
ish Legionaries enlisting in America for service in Palestine 
under the British flag, for which purposes we have made con- 
tributions through the Zionist organizations. 

Further mention might be made of several other groups of 
organized Jewry, both national and local, that are aiding the 
welfare work in its library collections and in other ways, and 
still the list of our co-operating agencies would not be ex- 
hausted; but for the present purposes of illustrating our 
attachment and responsibility to the organized Jewry of 
America, it is probably not necessary to multiply examples. 

From the foregoing it will be seen that it is probably but fair 
to say the Jewish Welfare Board truly represents both the 
American Government and American Jewry — at least so far as 
the organizations of the latter are concerned. Unprecedented 



8 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

as this is in the entire history of Jewish life in America, the 
Welfare Board lays no claim to any special distinction for this 
achievement. It is the crisis which confronts America, the 
crisis of the World War, that has brought about this result, and 
if it may be accounted an advantage from the point of view of 
Jewish group life, it is an advantage for which we as Jews can 
assume no merit or distinction. We shall, on the other hand, 
merit rebuke and censure if, to the accomplishment created 
by these unlooked-for world conditions, we shall make no 
contribution of our own. We can neither truly speak for our 
Government nor for the organized Jewry of America, unless we 
also represent the unorganized Jewish people of America, and 
by this unorganized Jewish people we must understand the 
eighty thousand or more American soldiers and sailors of 
Jewish faith and the hundreds of thousands more whose in- 
terests are bound up with theirs. 

Difficult as it is to be true to the thoughts and sentiments of 
the Jewish people, the Welfare Board ardently desires so to be. 
With this general attitude toward its work, it assumes to preach 
no special -ism (except Judaism), and it permits none to be 
preached. In its religious work in the camps it attempts to 
meet the needs of the men as these needs are there ascertained. 
For Jews desiring an orthodox service it promotes orthodox 
services. For sons of Eeform Jews it supplies reform services 
with the Union Prayer Book. For the preponderating group 
of soldiers of orthodox Jewish families, whose requirements 
are best met by what is called Conservative Judaism, appro- 
priate services are conducted accordingly. Without standard- 
izing any doctrine of its own, the Welfare Board endorses all 
degrees of doctrine, if soldiers of Jewish faith uphold them. 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 9 

Without seeking to impose any ready-made program of its own, 
it gives encouragement to whatever the self-expression of the 
Jewish men demands. 

With the American Library Association the Board is 
co-operating in supplying Yiddish books and other reading 
matter to Yiddish-speaking men. It has prepared to date, for 
distribution in the camps, three pamphlets in Yiddish, one on 
Government benefits and two on problems of social hygiene, 
and it has at the present time in contemplation several addi- 
tional pamphlets in this language. For those who desire to 
conduct Jewish discussion circles it has now in preparation 
several subject outlines for guidance and - instruction in the 
conduct of such circles. With a donation from the Jewish 
Publication Society of a library of Jewish books in each of the 
camps and cantonments, foundations have been laid for a Jew- 
ish library, to which the Board is making additions from week 
to week. 

In addition to these group activities along religious or edu- 
cational lines, the welfare workers specialize in what has been 
called personal welfare work, and it may be said without exag- 
geration that no personal welfare work that is being carried 
on in the American camps is more intensive or constructive 
than that of the representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board. 
The personal problems that come before the welfare workers 
have a vast variety of phases, including certain military and 
non-military problems of the men themselves, as well as ques- 
tions involving the men and their families. Our workers are 
regular visitors at the hospitals and guard-houses ; they assist 
and advise men in matters of transfer, leave, and real or fan- 
cied discrimination ; they advise them as to money and business 
matters, many of our representatives giving legal advice. 



IQ THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

Others who are rabbis perform individual religious ministra- 
tions of various kinds, particularly at the embarkation camps. 
In cases involving the families of men, it is our policy to refer 
largely to the American Eed Cross, to whom the Government 
has delegated these functions, A basis of co-operation has 
been established with the Eed Cross, but of necessity it is still 
tentative. The family difficulties of men in the service consti- 
tute a developing problem. It is a dynamic rather than a static 
situation that we are here dealing with, and the basis of 
co-operation between the welfare agencies and the Eed Cross 
must of necessity be progressive rather than fixed, depending 
upon developing problems and experience, as well as upon 
changes in formulation of policy in the Eed Cross itself and 
as between the Eed Cross and the War Department. The prob- 
lem of the welfare worker is not confined to the camp, however. 
He follows the soldiers wherever they go. In the near-by com- 
munities, the welfare worker make^ the community welfare 
program, co-ordinating the hospitality activities, collecting and 
dispatching the comforts and gifts, managing the entertain- 
ments at the community center, and assisting soldiers and 
sailors in utilizing the religious or other facilities of the town 
or city. 

For the men overseas, a special group has been assigned. It 
comprises a commission of three workers, and an additional 
worker M^ho will remain in Paris to direct the overseas work, 
while the others will return with a report based upon their 
survey of existing conditions, A supplementary group will 
comprise some six or eight workers, trained in our American 
service, whose function it will be to initiate similar activities 
in the important posts in France, and to this group additions 
will be made from month to month, until an adequate force 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD H 

shall have been sent abroad. In addition to the welfare 
workers, the Government contemplates sending army chaplains 
of the various faiths, to the extent of one for each twelve 
hundred men. The Jewish chaplains are selected by the Gov- 
ernment after endorsement by the Committee on Chaplains of 
the Welfare Board, which since the beginning of the war has 
acted as the Government's advisory agency, with reference to 
all Jewish chaplains. 

Though ostensibly limited in its work to the men of the 
United States Army and Navy, the Welfare Board conceives its 
task broadly. Under the latest military rulings, American sol- 
diers abroad are members of the army of the Allies, and with 
this breaking down of national distinctions, the scope of our 
work is correspondingly enlarged. Thus the Welfare Board has 
purchased ten thousand copies of the books for soldiers pub- 
lished by Dr. J. H. Hertz, Chief Eabbi of Great Britain, for 
distribution among the English-speaking Jewish soldiers of 
the Allies, five thousand copies of Psalms and five thousand 
copies of a pamphlet entitled Jewish Thoughts. These are 
being distributed through Dr. Levy, Chief Eabbi of Paris, 
and Lieutenant Voorsanger, chaplain with the American Ex- 
peditionary Forces. 

We have likewise made a subvention to the Jewish Commu- 
nity of Washington for welfare work among civilian workers, 
including women as well as men, and we are making a study 
of conditions among Jewish girls in New York as a result of 
revelations recently made with respect to places largely fre- 
quented by soldiers and sailors. 

Whether in all this work we represent the sentiments and 
viewpoints of the Jewish people, or whether we fail to represent 
it, would be difficult to say. Indeed, our Jewry of America is of 



12 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

such a composite nature, and the forces that play upon it are so 
varied and deep-rooted in their origin, that it is hard even to 
ascertain what these sentiments and viewpoints are. So far as 
the articulate groups are concerned, we know that we have been 
criticized now for being too Jewish, and again for not being 
Jewish enough ; for advocating what has been called " segrega- 
tion ", and again for being exponents of what has been called 
the melting-pot theory; on the one hand, for making martyrs 
of the Jewish men with the colors, because we have failed to 
furnish them with kosher food, and, on the other, for making 
martyrs of them in our sympathy with those who desire such 
dietary restrictions. Fault is found with us for permitting 
Yiddish books to be circulated in the camps, and again we are 
blamed for not providing enough of this literature. 

Of one other important department of the welfare work scant 
mention has as yet been made — the work of our local Jewries. 
We hold that our purpose is unfulfilled, that we cannot truly 
represent either the Government or nationally organized 
Jewry, unless and- until we also represent the locally organized 
Jewry, that is, the local Jewish communities. It is from these 
local communities that the Jewish soldiers have come. It is to 
these communities that they will return. Indeed, in ten or' 
a score of years from now, the eighty or hundred thousand, 
or possibly one hundred and fifty thousand Jews of our 
National Army and Navy will be the prominent Jewish citi- 
zens, the upholders of our Jewish communities, the leaders 
and workers of our local Jewries. If we would have them 
remain steadfast to these communities throughout all the 
tragic days through which they must presently pass, they must 
be made to feel the spiritual forces of the communities behind 
them. They must know that these forces are with them wher- 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 13 

ever they may go. Apart from this, the national Jewish Wel- 
fare Board is in the truest sense the child of the local commu- 
nities, as well as of the national Jewish organizations. It is 
to the local communities that we turn for both moral and finan- 
cial support. We look to them, moreover, for definite service. 
We expect each community to send its Jewish boys into the 
service with a formal expression of its belief in them, so that 
each man may feel the power and strength of his community 
behind him. We expect each community to follow its soldiers 
with gifts, by correspondence and other aid, as well as by 
visitation to their families. We expect each community, mean- 
while, to prepare for the return of these yoiing men, for their 
readjustment to civil life, for the rehabilitation of their 
families, and for the new adjustments in the work of the social 
agencies of each town. 

It was with all these ideals in mind that the Welfare Board, 
unlike the Knights of Columbus and the Y. M. C. A., incorpo- 
rated into its platform a program of town as well as of camp 
work. For the past six months it has worked incessantly in the 
organization of what it calls local branches. At the present day 
one hundred and fifty six Jewish communities have organized 
themselves as J. W. B. branches. More are in process of organi- 
zation. Before the end of this year the Welfare Board plans to 
have organized no less than two hundred local Jewries as Wel- 
fare Board subsidiaries. The results of this policy have already 
proven the wisdom thereof. It has stimulated wide-spread 
interest in soldier and sailor work. This is particularly true 
of those centers of Jewish life which are somewhat remote from 
large encampments. In the camp cities or camp towns the 
presence of uniformed men has of itself stimulated this inter- 
est, and it may be truly said that the real welfare workers 



14 THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 

are the Jews and Jewesses of these camp cities. In the very 
first days and months of the war, they were contributing their 
time and energies and giving of their means to the entertain- 
ment of men on leave, to visiting the sick, and to affording 
comfort to the lonely and dejected. But in the towns more 
remote from the camps this stimulation of interest has been 
provided by the organization of the J. W. B. branches. 

The fiscal policy of the Welfare Board was determined sev- 
eral months ago when its Executive Committee voted in favor 
of a central collection and disbursement of funds under which 
all moneys raised for and in behalf of the Welfare Board 
became payable to the national treasurer, the national body 
making itself responsible in turn for promoting and financing 
welfare work in the towns and cities as well as in the American 
and overseas camps. It was felt that, though this fund was 
procured from the local Jewries of the country, authority to 
spend it should proceed from the central ofiice, which, by 
reason of its national and international perspective, could best 
decide as to the wisdom of expenditures, and thus guarantee 
to the local Jewries the best possible administration of the 
funds that they themselves had created. Any other policy 
would have been fatal, and would have made each community 
the collector and dispenser of its own welfare fund, thus lead- 
ing to excessive outlays for town hospitality, much of which 
is not only of no positive social value, but of a decided negative 
social value, while leaving without adequate resources the more 
immediately important work in the camps. Indeed to have 
adopted a less centralized system would have made impossible 
a truly responsible administration of the fund, such as the War 
Department justly expects of the agency which it has nomi- 
nated as the authoritative functioning body for its Jewish 



THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 15 

group of soldiers. The National Jewish Welfare Board desires 
to be in the truest sense the representative of local Jewries. It 
is the local communities organized, combined, and raised to 
national self-consciousness. In this view of the case, the 
national office is but the visible expression of a covenant or 
pact between all the local communities of America, each of 
which desires to serve the most by serving all the rest. 

The national office furnishes to each community under this 
pact the advantages of a broad perspective. It provides a 
means of contact with the Federal Government to which it is 
accredited by the Jews of America. It has to-day an organi- 
zation of nearly 200 workers associated for the purpose of 
carrying on the welfare work of the correlated communities of 
the country. It provides to these communities a school in 
which each month a new group of some twenty-five or more 
men from various sections are trained as community ser- 
vants — men who now give themselves to Jewish war work and 
will not fail the community when later called upon to help solve 
the even more trying problems of the post-war period. It 
places at the disposition of all local communities a Eesearch 
Department for the study of the war aspects of community 
problems as they change and develop under the impact of the 
world struggle. 

Has not then an organization like this, created in an emer- 
gency — representing the American Government, organized 
Jewry, the plain Jewish people, and the local communities of 
America — a unique opportunity? And shall not American 
Jews avail themselves of it by rising now as never before to a 
true consciousness of the character, the scope, and the mean- 
ing of their entire community ? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

iiniiiiiii 



008 857 770 A ^ 



